


We Need to Talk About Hermione

by imamaryanne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27942956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imamaryanne/pseuds/imamaryanne
Summary: On Hermione's eleventh birthday, Minerva McGonagall goes to the Granger's house to let them know their daughter is a witch, and to invite her to school at Hogwarts. The muggle parents are unsure.
Kudos: 6





	We Need to Talk About Hermione

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this YEARS ago for a writing prompt group I was in. It got disqualified because we weren't supposed to write fanfiction (boo), and I promptly forgot about it. I just found it as I was cleaning out my Google Docs and figured people on ao3 might appreciate it even if my writing group people didn't.

The Grangers knew something was different about their daughter, and it wasn’t just her unusual intelligence either. Hermione could read picture books before she turned three, and by six was settling down with the Encyclopedia Britannica. She picked up math equations with no problem and had taught herself algebra by third grade. 

And while the Grangers were certainly proud of how smart their daughter was, there was no denying that those smarts separated her from her peers. She didn’t make friends easily, and the only birthday party invitations she’d ever gotten were from the children of their own friends, not other kids from her school. Even at those parties, Hermione had little patience for musical chairs or pin the tail on the donkey, and would wander off in a house to see what books were on the shelves. 

But no, it wasn’t just her smarts that made the Grangers think there was something off about Hermione. As she got older, they couldn’t keep ignoring the fact that weird things happened when Hermione was around. They’d had to replace more television remote controls than they could count because Hermione would get her hands on them and they’d just stop working, sometimes they’d even smoke before breaking in a small explosion. One time while her mother was cooking dinner, a small kitchen fire had broken out, and Hermione, thinking fast, put it out with a glass of water she’d been drinking. Only it had been a small glass, and several liters of water had poured out of it, as though the glass was bottomless. 

They weren’t the only ones who had noticed it. When Hermione was nine, kids began teasing her at school, mostly about being smart or bossy or about her bushy hair. But that stopped happening pretty quickly, when strange things began happening to the kids teasing her. Ceiling tiles fell on their heads, desk lids slammed on their fingers, or they tripped over invisible objects. Those kids may not have been as smart as Hermione, but even they figured out pretty quickly that something was off, and it was better to just ignore her. 

If it bothered Hermione that she didn’t have any friends, she never let her parents know. She went to school, where the teachers raved about her, and came home and read and ate dinner with her parents. She was an unfailingly polite little girl, if a bit impatient with others when they failed to grasp a concept she had no problem with. And though she was often alone, she never complained about being lonely. 

The day of Hermione’s eleventh birthday was unusually warm for mid-September. Hermione and her parents had woken up early that Friday morning, because they were taking her to London for the whole weekend for her birthday. She wanted an entire weekend of going to museums. 

As they were finishing up their packing, a knock came at the door. Mr. Granger answered it, and saw before him an older woman with square spectacles and gray hair pulled back in a severe bun. Despite the warm weather, she wore a dark traveling cloak, clasped at the neck with a silver pin in the shape of a lion. 

“Dr. William Granger?” she asked. 

“Yes?” he answered. 

“My name is Minerva McGonagall. I’m here to speak to you and your wife about a position we have open for your daughter at our school next year.”

Mrs. Granger came and stood next to her husband curiously. “Are you from Brighton or St. George’s?” she asked. Those were the two schools, both with International Baccalaureate programs, that the Grangers had been considering for Hermione once she turned twelve.

“No. I’m from a different school, one that is more....specialized. May I please come in?”

Mr. and Mrs. Granger glanced at each other nervously before holding the door open so Professor McGonagall could come in. They showed her to the kitchen and offered her some tea, which she turned down. 

“So what school are you from?” Mrs. Granger asked, sitting across from McGonagall at the kitchen table. 

“The school is called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Mr. Granger guffawed, “Witchcraft? What nonsense is this?”

“I understand this is a shock to you. But we’ve had Hermione down as a prospective student at Hogwarts since the day she was born eleven years ago.”

“What? You don’t even know our daughter!”

“That’s true, I don’t. But let me ask you something, do strange things happen when Hermione is around?”

“No,” said Mr. Granger firmly, while his wife said, “Well…”

McGonagall looked at Mrs. Granger, “Maybe electronic devices go haywire? Things fall down or go crashing when she gets upset?”

“Are you saying Hermione is a witch?”

“She’s magical,” McGonagall said, nodding her head.

Mr. Granger snorted, “Please. Who sent you? What kind of a joke is this? I know some of the other school children like to tease Hermione, but I didn’t think another kid could convince their own Grandmother to get in on it.”

Before McGonagall could answer, Mrs. Granger said weakly, “All of those broken remote controls. The microwaves that need replacing more than once a year.”

“Hermione’s magic interferes with the electronics,” McGonagall said gently. 

“You aren’t actually believing this?” Mr. Granger said incredulously to his wife.

“Remember when the ceiling tile fell on Grant MacDowell’s head last year? Right as he was teasing her?”

“She didn’t  _ do _ that,” Mr. Granger said. “She couldn’t have even reached the ceiling.”

“Exactly. She couldn’t have reached the ceiling, but she was upset and it fell on the boy who was upsetting her. Things like this happen all the time with her,” Mrs. Granger pointed out. “I’ve thought about it a lot and I even took to reading a little bit about telekenesis because I noticed it so much.”

“You have?”

“I thought you’d make fun of me, so I never told you. But oh, this makes so much sense.” She turned to McGonagall, “So you’d teach her how to control it?”

“We would teach her how to use it, how to get better at it,” she hesitated for a moment. “There’s a whole wizarding world out there. Once Hermione starts at Hogwarts, she will be a part of the wizarding world. She’ll be trained as a wizard, and unless she decides to come back into the non-magical world, she will get a job and live as a part of the wizarding world.”

“Well, we would have to approve her curriculum,” Mrs. Granger said. “Hermione is very bright for her age, and she needs to be placed in advanced maths and sciences.”

McGonagall hesitated again. “Although we do encourage students to keep up with their other studies, maths and languages, the curriculum at Hogwarts is designed for magical education.”

Mrs. Granger looked confused, “So what courses are offered in the curriculum?”

“The type of courses required for a student to get a job within the wizarding world after graduation. Potions would be similar to your chemistry, but studying magical elements of the ingredients. Herbology is much like your botany. We also offer charms, transfiguration-”

“Transfiguration?” Mr. Granger said, “What in heaven’s name is that?”

Professor McGonagall withdrew a long stick from an inner-pocket on her cloak. “Allow me to demonstrate some of what we would be teaching.”

“What’s that?” Mrs. Granger asked. 

“It’s a wand. Wands are specially made for each witch or wizard before starting at Hogwarts. No two wands are alike. They concentrate and direct a witch’s or wizard’s magic.” Mr. and Mrs. Granger watched intently as McGonagall performed several tricks, or spells. She made objects fly across the room, shot water out the tip of her wand, transfigured a tea cup into a rat then back into a teacup. She continued talking about what she was doing and about the usefulness of each spell to witches and wizards. 

Finally Mr. and Mrs. Granger were convinced that magic does, indeed exist, and that Hermione is a magical person. However, they were unhappy about Hogwarts’ lack of hard sciences, and maths, and honestly, Hermione was very close to fluency in French and Hogwarts didn’t offer any language classes other than runes. (“Really? Runes?” Mr. Granger had asked.)

“I think we’ll have to decline,” Mrs. Granger said gently. “Perhaps we could work with you to find some sort of magical tutor-”

She was interrupted by Hermione bursting into the room, her face was flushed and it appeared she had tears in her eyes. “No!” she said to her mother. “No, I need to go to that school.” She sounded desperate.

“Were you eavesdropping?” her father asked sternly. 

“It’s not eavesdropping if you’re talking about me and my business. Please, you have to let me go to that school.”

“Hermione, we just don’t think the curriculum-”

She interrupted her mother again, “But I  _ belong _ there!” Tears began leaking out of her eyes in earnest. “Please mum and dad. You don’t understand. I don’t have friends in my regular school because I don’t belong there. There’s something about me that the other kids don’t understand, and I never understood it either. But now I do. I’m  _ magic. _ I have to go to magic school.”

“But your dreams of being a physicist or a mathematician!”

“I don’t care about that anymore. I want to learn how to turn objects into other objects. I want to know how to brew potions. I want to know about magical history, and the laws of magic and maybe I can figure out how magic came to be one day.” She turned to Professor McGonagall, “Can I get any books? Can I start next week?”

McGonagall smiled obligingly at Hermione. “Next time you’re in London, you’ll be able to check out the magical shops, which include a magical bookstore.”

“We’re going to London today!” Hermione jumped up and down, clapping her hands in a display of pure joy and enthusiasm her parents had never witnessed. 

McGonagall gave them instructions on how to get to the Leaky Cauldron, a pub, and how to ask Tom, the barkeeper, to get them into a place called Diagon Alley. She also explained that you needed to be eleven at the start of a school year on September First, so Hermione wouldn’t be able to begin for almost an entire year. Hermione wasn’t disappointed, it would, she pointed out, give her a chance to catch up on all the reading. 

“Are there lots of kids like me?” Hermione asked McGonagall. “Kids who have non-magical parents?”

“About a quarter of the students at Hogwarts will be muggle-born,” McGonagall said, she turned to the Granger parents, “Muggle is the term used for non-magical people.”

“But everyone who goes to Hogwarts is magic, right? I mean…” Hermione drifted off, “The things that break when I hold them, the things that fly right to my hands when I need them. I’m not the only one that happens to?” 

“No,” McGonagall said gently. “It happens to all magical children before they get to Hogwarts. The only difference is that children of witches and wizards know it’s their magic coming in.”

Hermione turned to her parents, “I’m going,” he said stubbornly. “You can’t stop me. For the first time in my life, I’ll fit in. I’m going.”

Mr. and Mrs. Granger glanced at each other. They didn’t speak, because what was there to even say? But they turned toward Hermione and as one, nodded their heads. 


End file.
